CHRISTMAS - A CHRISTIAN CELEBRATION OR BAPTIZED PAGANISM?

 

Living Faith Church, Indianapolis

Let me start with wishing you a Merry Christmas. Then, let me follow up by questioning some of our Christmas traditions. How's that for creating some confusion? If I start sounding like Scrooge, please bear with me until the end of this blog.

Two items I've seen recently have inspired and influenced this blog. The first is watching Kirk Cameron's movie "Saving Christmas." The other, which came on CBN News right before I was going to write this blog, was an episode of "Faithwire Presents Faith Vs. Culture" with Dan Andros and Dale Partridge, titled "To Santa Or Not To Santa."

Let me begin by mentioning that the Christmas Wars were silent this year. On the one hand, there are the secularists who want to remove any remembrance of Christ. On the other are Christians who believe Christmas is a pagan holiday filled with pagan traditions and symbols and thus play the role of Scrooge. Again, both of these antagonists didn't show up on my Facebook Newsfeed this year.

Allow me to start with the movie. The plot of "Saving Christmas" is Cameron's brother-in-law, named Christian, is grieved with all the materialism and how the focus is on unbiblical concepts like Santa Claus and the Christmas tree. Sadly, neither the questions nor the answers were the strongest, and the point of the movie seems to be we shouldn't be grieved with all the materialism of Christmas. 😱

The common thread between the movie and the TV show is Santa Claus. One of the weak arguemnts Christian uses in "Saving Christmas" is that "Santa" has the same letters as "Satan." While true, we also need to remember "Santa" means "Saint," as in the California cities Santa Ana and Santa Barbara. Cameron's refutation is telling a story about St. Nicholas of Myra, including a telling of the legend that he beat up on the heretic Arius. (This legend was first told in 1300, with it being a follower of Arius; it later became the theology's founder.) 

Christian did refer to the godlike qualities of Santa such as his omniscience ("He sees you when you're sleeping, He knows when you're awake, etc.) and the works base of the Santa myth, with him giving those who do what is good all the stuff they want. Cameron completely ignored those objections so he could tie in St. Nick with the real Saint Nicholas. Andros and Partridge of Faithwire treated those objections more seriously, as well as stating that parents spend eleven months a year teaching their children to care for others to please the invisible sovereign of the universe and then encourage them to think of themselves to get the favor of an invisible fable.

How about Christmas trees and other items? Are they symbols with godly origins or totally pagan? One friend encourages people to read all of Jeremiah 10 to see that God condemned the Christmas tree. I read that chapter, and concluded it's not talking about modern Christmas trees. Jeremiah points out they can't speak and can't move themselves (10:5); I've never met anyone expecting a Christmas tree to talk to them or to transport itself from point A to point B without someone carrying them. The language in this chapter, talking about overlaying it with gold, made me think about overlaying a wooden image with gold (Isaiah 40:19-20). Is it possible that when Jeremiah is referring to a tree, he's actually using that term of an idol to get across that carved image is just a tree and not a god?

I've heard Christians avoid traditions because those traditions can lose their original meaning. This is true about godly practices, but could it also be equally true with pagan practices? I won't argue that decorated trees, missletoe, and wreaths didn't originally have ungodly roots, but I also don't see anything in their use that can be identified as paganism.

There's a lot of questions about Christmas and its traditions. Some say that the Constantine era church started assigning Biblical themes to heathen festivals to keep the pagans from revolting. I can't say it was or wasn't true, since I wasn't around then. Maybe Jesus wasn't born December 25th, but I heard one pastor say he'd take any opportunity to honor Him he gets.

One last thing about the Christmas tree. To be honest, I wouldn't put one on the church platform. However, a former church I attended would have a tree on the platform and place shoebox gifts underneath it for the Baptist Center to distribute to children in women's shelters. I liked it being a reminder of a ministry the church was doing.

BUT HERE'S THE IMPORTANT POINT!!! Too often we are looking for things to judge and correct others, and we don't take off from that practice on Christmas (or any other holiday or non-holiday either). I may have my concerns, and you may not. I should not ignore my concerns so I fit in, but neither should I rob joy from others by imposing my opinion and concerns on those who don't have them. After all, isn't that what grace is? God showed us grace, and Christ's birth is the perfect illustration of that: Shouldn't we show that grace to others also?

Again, have a Merry Christmas. (Unless you want to be like me and have a Joseph Christmas instead.)